`Mountain' a familiar, tired climb

Though it gleams with the polished smiles of a half-dozen attractive young people, the eminently average new WB series, "The Mountain," (8 p.m. Wednesday),is actually something of a Frankenstein's monster.

It's got the "dutiful brother vs. irresponsible brother" plotline from the early days of HBO's "Six Feet Under" welded to the "intrigue at a beautiful resort" of Fox's "North Shore," plus a bit of extreme sports for Johnny Knoxville fans and several love triangles ripped from daytime soaps.

Set at a gorgeous ski resort, "The Mountain" faces stiff competition not only from hot nighttime soaps such as Fox's "The O.C.," but also from "Jack & Bobby," the WB's other new drama for fall, and the program that the network is clearly betting the farm on.

"The Mountain" certainly doesn't share "Jack & Bobby's" strong writing; at one point, David Carver Jr. (Oliver Hudson), who's inherited the family ski lodge from his dead grandfather, wails that his "life has been spent running away from this place, trying not to be something, instead of what I am." But what Carver is, exactly, aside from a would-be championship motocross racer, is unclear in the series premiere.

It is clear that David's older brother, Will (Anson Mount), is the Angry Sibling, upset with their deceased grandfather for willing the family business to the wrong brother. Sister Shelley (Tara Thompson) is the Tortured Teen, haunted by the fear that she caused the avalanche that killed the family patriarch.

Barbara Hershey rounds out the cast as the mother of the three Carver kids, and speaking of creatures stitched together from a multitude of parts, Lee Majors of "Six Million Dollar Man" fame appears briefly but effectively as the Carver family patriarch, David Carver Sr. If only Majors' character could return from the dead to liven things up a bit on "The Mountain."